My Worst Cover Song Ever = Guaranteed Airplay

Word of Mouth Love Song

Pictured: subtlety.

I’m going to be on the radio for a few seconds today.

A New Hampshire Public Radio show, Word of Mouth, issued a challenge the day before Valentine’s Day. “Calling All Musicians,” they said. “Help Us Fix Our Terrible Love Song!” they said. It seems one of their producers attempted to create the ultimate love song out of nothing but clichés and it went about as well as you’d expect. Listeners might still be able to salvage it, they reasoned.

Of course I couldn’t resist the siren call of an open submission process. I did, after all, write and record a theme song for Nathan Fillion when he asked.

Nathan Fillion theme song request

He asked everybody, I mean. Not little old me in particular. Shucks.

In that case, sending a link to the MP3 the next morning utterly failed to garner the retweet and subsequent adulation I so desperately desired. With a local radio show, however, the next morning was not only quick enough – it got me first billing. Rather than “fix” the song, I opted to enhance its essential character (“Terrible”) with some overbearing MIDI and a video featuring horrendous heart animation and my best impression of Stevie Wonder as I glanced between lyrics and my fretboard.

Other submissions sauntered in – audio only, I must haughtily note – until some critical mass was reached and Word of Mouth announced it would play a “medley of listener submissions”. A couple were from NHPR staff members. One was from California. Noble attempts all, but I don’t think anyone will be offended when I say that the source material was a bit much to overcome.

By my count, it’ll be my fifth time on the radio, after:

  • That time I got roped into a fundraiser for a literacy project with ties to the Church of Scientology, and a college station in Boston played two songs from Stars or Streetlamps while interviewing the organizer, who said all profits from selling that album would go to the literacy project, which I totally never agreed to.
  • That time I sent a CD of “Practical Car” to Car Talk for them to play between segments and they did for some reason.
  • Those couple times my boss at The Hippo was sick or on vacation or something and I talked to WJYY about upcoming weekend events instead of her.

This latest instance is, of course, my proudest moment.

Listen to NHPR at 2:00 pm ET today, either on regular old terrestrial radio or online, to hear the glorious music. I am through waiting for you, Nathan Fillion.

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